Chapter Seventeen
Kriss gave no thought to what he would play, wanting only to get it over with. Perhaps because of that lack of conscious direction, in an instant, he had no control at all. The touchlyre’s invisible fingers reached into his mind, found his fear, guilt, and hatred, ripped those emotions from him, funnelled them through itself—and hurled them at Salazar and his henchman.
Kriss felt every muscle in his body snap rigid, as though cast in steel, as the power of the instrument poured through him like a purge of live steam, the touchlyre’s strings shrieking a single, ear-splitting discord. Salazar’s man screamed and collapsed, and Salazar’s face slackened, his knees buckled, and he fell to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut, unconscious or dead.
Only then
